Can we make meetings worse?

Of course we can! After a little brainstorming, we came up with the next great idea: assign your team members to attend meetings on your behalf, but make sure you don’t give them any authority to speak on your behalf or any preparation for them to be able to represent you!

It’s a win-win! Not only will your team members hate the meeting (or series of meetings) but over time they’ll resent you as the manager. They’re already thinking less of you as a leader.

Picture it: Your team member sits quietly in a meeting that they have no control over, no effective input into and no desire to be in. The meeting drags on and on, for them, because they have 30 other things they could be doing instead and this meeting isn’t adding value because of how you’ve assigned people to it.

But there’s more! The meeting organizer invited you because they either expected input from you or decisions by you. By providing neither, you’ve managed to waste everyone else’s time, frustrate them, create friction between the organizer and your tortured team member and, on top of it all, they’re going to have to call another meeting to explain it all again to you and get your input or decision then!

At this point in time, you’re probably wondering if we’re being sarcastic, frustrated or just late for April Fool’s day.

We’d love to say that this was satire, but we see this over and over again on client projects. If you’re note deliberately trying to sabotage an initiative, stop doing this.

How do you manage meeting that need you when you can’t attend in person?

• If the meeting requires you to approve or to make decisions, ask to have the meeting rescheduled!
  • If you can’t be there and you can’t delegate the decision-making authority, don’t send someone to represent you. You’ve set it up so they can’t.
• If you are able to send someone to gather information and brief you so you can make a decision after the meeting, that’s great
  • Remember to brief them on the full scope of the information and context you need to make a sound decision
  • Make sure that the meeting organizer knows that this is your intent
  • It’s up to you then to reach out an ask questions before you promised a decision
• If you’re expected to deliver information in the meeting, make sure anyone you send to represent you can do so:
  • Context to understand the initiative and your team’s role in it
  • Knowledge and information required to share
  • Coordination with you to answer unexpected questions in a timely manner and make sure on the accurate, up-to-date information is shared

There are a lot of ways that meetings can be inefficient or unproductive without actively trying to make them worse. As a leader, the negative impact goes a lot further than just that meeting. It affects the initiative or chain of initiatives, it affects your reputation, your political power, your personal power and the level of loyalty and engagement from your team.

Sometimes you don't have to try to make things better, as long as you try not to make them worse!

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